Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating more web traffic is add content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to start to get web traffic automatically simply by publishing web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming ever more competitive, it’s worth exploring every opportunity you can to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is going fine in the gizmo-making assembly line when things come to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks directly towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for about 5 minutes, the expert then produces a little hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap near the right edge of the box.
Immediately, everything begins working as before.
The floor manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why were they expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges can seem ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up and activated to achieve certain results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things work as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different parts such as your web hosting server, your site, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites.
Integration With External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic network, content linked back to your website will be automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will then be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, use this information to automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, tracking code can be added to WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, the details can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
***
Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify your update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is immune from cyber attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easier for search engines to index …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their friends and members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can easily add social features to your website with WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your options and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Sections To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site, go here:
Post Tags & Categories
Post categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When online users type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating new web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
***